Monthly Archives: August 2014

Street art again: Space Invader in Grenoble

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Street Art is a strange combination of references to art of course, but also to sociology, politics and economy. It might be why I became interested in the phenomenon and mention it here, in a blog related to start-ups which are also a strange combination of creation, social policy and economy. Both reconsider the established world, the institutions. Street Art interferes with private property and invades places it is not allowed to touch in theory. Street Art revisits consumerism and capitalism in a very interesting manner. And in the end, it became a part of consumerism, capitalism and the established art world. In a way, it’s exactly the same thing with start-ups. The successful ones become a part of the established economy. Also, both appeared without a clear objective. The computer, the Internet were nearly as useless as art in its first years. In the next picture, what does belong to advertising and what to art?

banksy-ad

Whatever I continue my virtual and real visits to street artists with Space Invader in Grenoble in 1999. As you may imagine, there is not much left, but still a lot online! Attached is my pdf compilation of Space Invader Grenoble invasion.

SI-Grenoble-Map

PS: You can find my compilations of Banksy in New York, the beautiful mosaic-mirrors of Pully and the invasions of Lausanne, Geneva, Bern, Basel, and Toyko under the tag Street Art.

The First Trillion-Dollar Start-up

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Thanks to my friend Jean-Jacques for pointing to a nice historical article about the beginnings of Silicon Valley. According to The First Trillion-Dollar Startup, “measured in today’s dollars, we believe the firm [ Fairchild ] would qualify as the first trillion dollar startup in the world.” I will let you read the other findings and will not relate again a story I mentioned in The fathers of Silicon Valley: the Traitorous Eight.

The authors show that Silicon Valley did not exist in 1957. No company active in semiconductor was based there as the East Coast was still the center of high-tech. But the founders of Fairchild are directly or indirectly responsible for 92 companies in Silicon Valley, today listed on Nasdaq or NYSE, worth over $2’000 billion and employing more than 800,000 people.

Here is a nice illustration of their study,
endeavor-insight-sv-2-retina
but I still love this one, a famous poster created by the author of the term Silicon Valley; I scanned it a few years ago,

the image below is taken from the previous (left and halfway up – corresponding to 1957)

HDSVBSV
The full report can be downloaded in pdf format and I find interesting their 3 lessons:
1. Great companies can develop in unlikely and challenging places.
2. A few entrepreneurs can make a large impact.
3. There is a framework for success that leaders can accelerate: ambition, growth, commitment, reinvestment.
HDSVBSV-acceleration

Space Invader in Tokyo

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Summer is not the season for start-ups, news is rather thin, with the exception perhaps of the GoPro IPO. I also use this blog to talk from time to time about street art and in particular of Space Invader. I also found an indirect way to discover a city, physically or virtually, is to start looking for these ephemeral works.

SpaceInvaderTokyo

Japan has always been an attracting place for me, so I became interested in what the artist has done there. There are dozens of photographs online, some maps, so I made ​​my own synthetic work in pdf format. [Other examples of SI fans in Tokyo include Nalice_Malice or True2death.]

Here is an updated version (May 2015) of my pdf file with more images.

I still have to make the actual discovery … Latest topic, Invader has launched its application for smart phone, Flash Invaders. It is perhaps this slight argument that will change my device!

flashinvaders